Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Please take a few minutes to read!To start
things off, we wanted to thank you for taking the time from your busy schedules
to pray for us, to read our often lengthy emails, and to love us (and many in
Malawi) well.The support we’ve had has been
nothing short of remarkable and God has dropped us to our knees many times over
the past 7 years since we began telling you of this ministry in Malawi.Seven years ago, we told you of a distant land in Africa that was one of the
poorest countries in the world. We told you of a desperately lost people who had little to
no knowledge of the Gospel and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.We told you of the clear calling that the Lord had put on our family’s life to GO and use church-centered sports
ministry to fish for men, women, boys and girls.We
did not know anyonein Malawi but we knew the King of the nations was
calling us so we went….and God met us
there.

Luke & Pastor Fostance

Many of you
know how amazing our great Father is but we just wanted to take a moment to
praise Him for all that he has been up to in Malawi through you over the past 6
years. As you are aware, the Lord hand-chose Pastor Fostance and brought him
alongside us from the very beginning in 2011.He continues to seek the face of Christ with
all of his heart and the Lord continues to flow through him in mighty ways
here.He and I (Luke) just returned from
a wonderful trip to the capital city sharing the vision of sports ministry with
two new denominations who are VERY interested in using this ministry tool as a
platform for making disciples of Jesus for years to come in Malawi.The fire is spreading.

Alzheimer’s & the Sovereignty of God

If you
reside in California, you might be aware that my dad has been diagnosed with
early onset Alzheimer’s.He and my mom
have really struggled over the past year as things have progressed.When I went to California in late 2016 for
a wedding, I had the chance to stay with them.During that time, Becca and I were praying
that the Lord would give us wisdom on what he wanted our family to do when it
came to helping and supporting my mom and dad through this terrible
disease.As we prayed, the Lord clearly
revealed to us, “Honor your father and
mother.”We couldn’t get it out of
our heads and I went back to Malawi with a very strong draw to pray with Becca
about retuning to California for a season to help with dad.

Over the following weeks in Malawi, the Lord made it very clear to us that we needed to
move to California to help my mom and dad as this disease progresses.This was an extremely difficult and
unexpected decision. We love Malawi and
didn’t plan on leaving so soon. But, as
we began to seek the prayers and advice of our leadership and mentors, the Lord
brought to the surface another great passion to our attention: refugees.Over the past 12 years, whenever we have been
in the USA, God has stirred our hearts for refugees.When we were at Moody, we worked with World
Relief with Burmese refugees; when we were in Wheaton over a year ago, we were
connected with refugees. We love working with those who have little to no known
Gospel knowledge, so no matter what we were going to do in CA for work, Becca
and I wanted to be involved in welcoming refugees and introducing them to
Christ. Especially
individuals who have little to no known Gospel knowledge. No
matter what we were going to do in California for work, Becca and I wanted to
be involved in a church that was actively involved in welcoming refugees into
Sacramento and introducing them to Jesus Christ.

So,
simultaneously, as we are grieving the thought of leaving Malawi, the Lord was
burdening our hearts for refugees in the USA.We prayed, “God, are you calling us to use sports to reach out to refugees in California?”

To make a
long story short, we Skyped with our Sports Friends Director and
he was supportive of our decision to go back.He then asked us if we were planning on leaving Sports Friends.We told him how much we absolutely love the
ministry and the global family that we have.Then we said, “We have something
we want to propose to you.”He then
graciously listened to the vision we had.God has been strongly burdening us to do what we’ve been doing in
Malawi: to be the visionaries in mobilizing local churches and followers of
Jesus to reach out to the lost using sports as the platform.Then we specified the people group who we
would target: primarily unreached refugees; Desperately
lost people with little to no knowledge of the Gospel.We
want to set our sights and prayers on them to reach these people with the glorious
life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ!Many of these refugee’s countries have been closed to missionaries for
decades but we believe God is bringing them to the USA for a reason: They need
to receive the warm hospitability of the Body of Christ to melt their hearts
for His fame. We strongly believe that
our God oversees the movement of all peoples as it says in Acts 17:26-27.The phrase from that passage that most
impacted us was “That they should seek God..and find him.”David Platt recently said, “When we see the migration of peoples, we must recognize that it is
from God for a reason.Make no mistake, God aims to be sought,
found, known, and enjoyed by all the peoples of the world, and He oversees
their travels toward that end. In His goodness, our God turns even the tragedy
of forced migration into the triumph of future salvation.”

Syrian Refugee family

The response
of our international director confirmed what we
felt the Lord was saying to us. He said, “We’ve been praying to start refugee
ministry in the western world and have really felt the Lord leading Sports
Friends to start something in the States to reach out to refugees.”Becca and I had tears of joy in our eyes as
we listened to our leader and we knew this was the Lord Jesus giving us our
marching orders.We have received a clear calling so we obey our King
and GO.

Refugee boys playing soccer

But what about Malawi?

Sports
Friends is a ministry that trains and empowers local churches how to make
disciples of Jesus through the powerful platform of sport.By the grace of Christ, this is now happening
at a large scale in Malawi and hundreds of local churches are making the name
of Jesus famous all across this land.GLORY BE TO CHRIST!A central
part of what Sports Friends does is building leadership capacity into the local
churches to lead the ministry moving forward for years to come.Discipleship is all about multiplication and
we praise God that it has happened in a Biblical way here in Malawi over the
past 6 years.We are leaving BUT the ministry continues to expand and multiply by the
leading of the Holy Spirit.Pastor Fostance and his wife Esnart are incredibly godly leaders who
will spearhead the ministry going forward.Please pray for them as these faithful servants take on this new
leadership role.Also, Chisomo and
Clement continue to work as full-time Sports Friends staff and are a wonderful
support to Fostance.We praise God that,
though we go, the ministry will not die.This is such a praise point!Also, Fostance will be mentored by Sports Friends regional leadership
and our fellow SIM leadership here in Malawi.He will not be a lone ranger in any way and is well loved by all of
Sports Friends Internationally.

Sports Friends Malawi leadership team

So when is this change going to happen?

The Voight
family will leave Malawi July of this year.We grieve at the thought of not living near Fostance, the Sports Friends team and the boys of Lyzee United.We do not look forward to that day of saying
goodbye.But, thankfully, it will be
just “goodbye for now” because we hope to visit as much as possible in the
decade to come & the far greater reality is that we will be joining many of
these brothers and sisters before the throne of God when we see the face of
Christ together and there will be people from every tribe, tongue and nation at
the wedding supper of the Lamb.Yes,
thankfully, it will only be “goodbye for now”, though there will be many
tears.

So, now…once
again, we will pack our bags and sell everything we have to go to a distant land with our marching
orders from our Lord.When you love
much, you open yourself up to hurting much.God has given us a massive amount of love for the people of Malawi and
now we hurt as we say goodbye.But, this
world is not our home.USA is not our
home.Malawi is not our home.Heaven is our home and we long for the day
when our King returns.Until then, He
bids each and every one of us to daily lay down our lives for the Gospel and
say, “Here am I, send me!”Though I
(Luke) grew up in California, it is truly a foreign land to us now.We will struggle greatly.We will miss the warm heart of Africa and we
will need the Bride of Christ to do just what they’ve done to us here, welcome
us with loving arms.And not just us,
but the refugees who, in time, will be coming with us.The Malawian church has welcomed us with
amazing hospitality and love and we’ve linked arms and God has done great
things.Soon, we’ll be moving stateside and
ask for your prayers and support as we reach out to hurting people who need the
love of Jesus.But we know the God who
has saved us is fully capable of saving any sinner on this earth.So we go to a city we’ve never lived in with
only a few people whom we know with rock solid confidence in our great God who
is mighty to save!

Please prayerfully consider a few things:

1.If you want
to continue to support us, you don’t have to change a thing.We are still with SIM and Sports Friends and
just are changing ministry locations from Malawi to Sacramento.Please prayerfully consider continuing your
amazing financial and prayer support of our family and Sports Friends Malawi.

2.Please
continue to pray for my mom and dad during this difficult time and direct any
questions you might have about this situation to us. BTW: We are thanking God for the new protocol my dad has been on that's had very positive results in the last few months.

3.Please pray the Lord would enable us to finish
well here in Malawi. There is so much to do in the next 5 months!

4.Pray that
the Holy Spirit would call out individuals and churches in the USA to partner
with us in making the name of Jesus known and praised among refugees in California.We cannot do it alone.We need coaches, volunteers, prayer warriors,
financial supporters, and people with hearts full of love, ready to reach out
with us. Now is the time to seek the face of the Lord for his movement among
these people who he has brought to us!

A few great resources to be more informed
about refugees in the USA & God’s heart for them

*Please
email us directly with any questions, concerns, comments, etc.:luke.voight@sim.orgor becca.voight@sim.org or we would love to talk to you on Skype or
arrange a meeting when we get to California in the summer.

We’ll leave
you with a quote from the article “God’s heart for the refugee” by David
Platt that has been used by the Lord in our lives over the past few weeks.

“Let us proclaim the Gospel urgently.This is an unprecedented opportunity!These people now have Gospel access all
across America.Could it be that God on
high has orchestrated these people so that YOU, your family, your church
might be the means that they hear the Gospel for thefirsttime?Let’s spread it to them urgently here, now? They are disillusioned by Islam and their
hearts are aching for better news.They
are prepared. Consider the beauty of the Gospel.God identifies as a refugee.He had to flee to Egypt as a refugee from a
murderous King.God is not detached; is
present, and is no stranger with suffering.He has not left them alone and He has come for us and severed the root
of suffering and has defeated death forever.This is the greatest news in the world and Refugees NEED to hear
it.They need to hear it now.They need it!It is the refugee’s greatest need.The doors are open today.Now is the time!One Syrian refugee woman in a camp said, “I’m
tired of being tied to a religion that doesn’t offer me hope.”She came to Jesus that day and was
baptized.

Instead of sitting back and spending all our
time debating whether or not a few of them can come to us, The time is now for
a lot of us to go to them. Outreach opportunities abound (in Sacramento and
many other places)Let’s wisely take
advantage of what our sovereign God is doing in the world…Are there risks in
proclaiming the Gospel to refugees?Sure
there are but where in the world did we get the idea that Christianity is
devoid of risk.It’s Only an
Americanized Christianity that prioritizes security in this world over
proclamation of God’s Word.As
followers of Christ, self is no longer our God.Safety is no longer our concern because this world is not our home and
we hope confidently for the day when sin will be no more.No more crisis and war and suffering.In this moment, we are ALL in a foreign land
if we are in Christ. We are sojourners, exiles, migrant. We are.We pray and we work HARD in anticipation to
the day when we meet our Savior with people from all over.”

Hebrews
13:13-14 – “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he
bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city
that is to come.”So..as Hebrews 13:2
says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some
have entertained angels without knowing it.”